wilkinson



(No Model.)

P. WILKINSON. Process of and Apparatus for Bleaching and Dyeing Cotton.No. 241,464.

Patented May 10,188i.

| If! I I 'Q I ll W;

WITNESSES INVEJVTOR Eager-deli WZ'Z/z'i'na on I By kzs dim/mom W N.PETERS. PhotoLiihagraphar. Washingfion. D. C.

2 Sheets-Sheet 1.

(No Model.) 2 Sheets-Sheet 2.

- F. WILKINSON. Process of and Apparatus for Bleaching and DyeingCotton. NO. 241,464.- Patented May'JO, 1881.

/ llllllll WITNESSES IJVVEJV'TOR- Mrrlcio Wibbbzaoib,

T. B h ls Aturuey J a N. PETERS, Photoiflhogmpher. Washington. D, C. ,1

UNITED TATEs PATENT OFFICE.

FREDERICK VVILKlNSON OF MANCHESTER, COUNTY OF LANCASTER,

ENGLAND.

PROCESS OF AND APPARATUS FOR BLEACHING AND DYEING COTTON.

SPECIFICATION forming part of Letters'Patent No. 241,464, dated May 10,11881.

Application filed March 7, 1881. (N model.) Patented in England December20, 1878.

T 0 all whom it may concern.-

Be it known thatI, FREDERICK WILKIN- SON, of Manchester, in the countyof Lancas ter, Great Britain, have invented certain Improvements in theArt of Bleaching and Dyein g Cotton and in Mechanism Therefor,of whichers of uniform diameters, adapted to revolve with different velocitiesby means of varyingsized gear-wheels; and Fig. 5 represents a sideelevation of rollers of different diameters, which may be made torevolve with uniform velocity by any ordinary gearing. These two figuresare not drawn to a scale,but are exaggerated in their respectivevariations of gear-wheels and of diameters for better illustration.

Heretofore the dyeing and bleaching of cotton and similar shortnon-felting fibrous sub-, stances, preparatory to the manufacture ofyarn, thread, or cloth fabrics, has been accom plished by immersioninliquids inmasses and subsequent treatment well known to those skilled inthe art, involving the employment of skilled labor,and many devices andprocesses have been invented and practiced for the purpose; but dyeingand bleaching of sliver formed insheets or bats by feeding the sheetscontinuously through liquids under im ingand bleaching such fiber,whereby skilled labor can be dispensed with, a peculiar continuousautomatic operation can be substituted for the ones now in vogue,uniformly excellent work can bedone, and great econo my can be secured.

Accordingly my invention, stated in general terms, relates to bleachingand dyeing cotton and other fibrous materials which are capable of beingreduced to the form of a narrow puffy sheet of great length and ofsubstantially uniform thickness, commonly called a lap? or bat in themanufacture of cotton; and it consists, mainly, in alternatelysaturating this long narrow puffy sheet withthe bleaching or dyeingliquor, and then squeezing out the liquor. so that the sheet of fibersis firstsaturated in the bleaching or dyeing liquor, then the liqnor issqueezed out of it, then the sheet of fibers isresaturated andresqueezed, every part of the sheet being saturated with the liquor andthe liquor squeezed from it severaltimes' as the sheetis fed alongthrough the apparatus.

Another feature of my invention consists in bleaching and washing thecotton or other fibrous material capable of being reduced to the form ofa lap or hat by bleaching, as above described, and then carrying thesheet'to a series of squeezing-rollers and a water-supply, where thesheet is alternately saturated with water and squeezed as it travelsthrough the apparatus.

Another feature of my invention consists in first immersing the sheet offibers in the dyein g-liquor, then squeezing the liquor out of it, thencausing it to travel for a distance through the 'air in order that theoxygen may act upon it, and repeating this operation several times asthe sheet travels th rough the apparatus.

Proceeding, now, to describe my invention more in detail by reference tothe letters on in practice, of a large number of slivers.-say seventy oreighty-as they come from. the carding-engine or other preparationmachine. As in practice these sliversare usually deposited in cans, itis convenient to form the sheet by lacin a number of these cans neartrou h a action on the axes. The sheet is best formed,

and passing the ends of the slivers through the first set of rollers, b,so as to form a sheet, B. A single sliver will be,.of course, much tootender to be treated by my process, but a sheet formed of a large numberof these slivers or in any other manner (too well known to needdescription here) will be abundantly strong. The end of sheet B is thencarried under the first roller, 0, and then up between the second pairof squeezing -rollers, b and so on, and delivered by the last pair ofsqueezing-rollers, b. The operation of this apparatus, as will be seen,is to pass sheet B into the bleaching-liquor and throughsqueezing-rollers alternately, thereby immersing it in the liquor andsqueezing the liquor from it several times, and insuring not only thethorough contact of the liquor with every fiber composing the sheet, butalso doing this by a continuous process and with a uniformity hithertounknown.

It will be seen that by my process only a very small portion of thefiber is treated at a time and each portion is treated several times insuccession. This would, of course, be a serious waste of time, althoughvery effective, were not the operation continuous, but, beingcontinuous, I am enabled to bleach a given amount of fiber in less thanone-tenth the time required by any other process known to me, and with auniformity which is not attained by any other process, unless conductedby skilled labor and with the utmost care.

When an acid bath is desirable a second trough and series of rollers areused, the operation being the same.

At (1 is a creeper, into which the sheet of fiber B is deposited by thelast pair of rollers,

b, and by this creeper the sheet is conducted to a series of rollers, e,and by these rollers c it is carried over tank 9 and under tank gflintowhich water is delivered at will through a pipe, h. This second tank isprovided at bottom with a number of perforations, and through these thewater flows, impinging upon the fibers and washing out thebleaching-liquor, the waste flowing out through a pipe, h", and the samesqueezing action takes place as that above described. After this thebleached and washed sheet is conducted, by a guide-roller, t, into anordinary drying -chamber, k, where it passes over rollers l, driven inany suitable manner as usual, and over supporting rollers or rods m, thesaid chamber being heated by steam-pipes, hot air, or by any other meanswell known in drying textile materials; or in place of the hot chamberthe sheet may pass over steam heated cylinders, as is well known asapplied to such purposes, or the supporting rollers or rods m mightthemselves be steam-pipes, as shown in the drawings. The sheet is thusdried, and is then conducted by rollers 02 0 to be formed into arpll, asat p, or it may be delivered into any suitable receptacle; and thisconcludes the operation of bleaching and drying, and leaves the fiber insubstantially its original fluffy condition, ready for manufacturing.

The creeper d has been described as conveying the' sheet from one set ofrollers to another; but it rrfay be used to afford time for thesaturated fiber to become thoroughly bleached before being washed byregulating the length of the said creeper to an extent which experiencewill readily teach; or instead of deliverin g the sheet direct to thecreeper it may be deposited by the rollers b into a skip or otherreceptacle, there to remain for the necessary time and then fed to therollers e.

What has been said of bleaching applies to dyeing;but in some cases twoor more liquors are required, and consequently the trough a should bedivided into compartments, as shown in Fig.2. In some cases dyeing cantake place without bleaching, and then thebleaching process is omitted;but in other cases bleaching is essential before the proper tints can beobtained by dyeing, and both processes are then practiced by onecontinuous operation in accordance with my invention with greatconvenience.

In some dyeing-that with indigo, for instance-it is well known that thematerial should be exposed for a period of time to the ac tion ofair,and I have applied my new principle to this kind ofdyeing by thusexposing the sheet after each immersion and squeezing. To effeet thisthe sheet is passed over another series of rollers, S, as shown in Fig.3, the dis tance of the rollers S from the squeezing-rollers beingsuifieient, in view of the rate of motion of the sheet, to give thenecessary exposure to the air.

In the drawings, Figs. 2 and 3,it is assumed that the sheet of fibers ismade up of slivers passing from cans, as in Fig. 1; but, of course, thelap may be formed in any other usual way.

In passing the bats between the squeezingrollers in the operation ofdyeing and of bleaching they will be compressed, compacted, and greatlyreduced in thickness, and at the same time materially elongated. Theresult is that each succeeding pair of squeezing-rollers after the firstpair should be slightly speeded in any ordinary way, in order to take upthe slack. Anotherobject ofspeedingthe succeeding pairs of rollers is toslightly strain or pull the travcling bats in order to improve theaction of the dyeing or bleaching liquor by causing it to more perfectlypermeate the bats. Therefore the speeding should be slightly more thansufficient to merely take up the slack. The texture of the bats is suchthat they will yield a little to strain without injury, and on thisaccount there might be slight variations in the speeding of the rollersin different machines without dangerto sueeessfulworking; but thespeeding of the succeeding rollers after the second pair should not bein the same ratio as that of the second pair to the first pair, becausethe first pair will effect more compression and elongation than thesecond, the second more than the third, and so on.

In practice I have found that the second pair of rollers may be speededas much as one inch to thirty with good eft'ectthat is to say, so thatthe traverse of the bat will be thirtyone inches between the second pairof rollers, while only thirty inches between the first pair. Theremaining pairs of rollers should be successively speeded somewhat less,the. third, for instance, about thirty-one and ahalf inches, the fourthabout thirty-one and three-fourths, and so on, slightly increasing by adiminishing ratio. These figures, however, need not necessarily befollowed exactly, because of the yielding texture of the bats abovementioned, but they will serve as a guide in the construction ofsuitable machinery for practicing my invention.

I am aware of the British patent to Russell and Peters, No. 10,454, of1845, and of the United States patent to Fossard, of November 7 1835,the first of which describes the continuous dyeing and spinning of asliver of flax or other fibrous substance intended to be spun, and thelatter of which describes a method of dyeing cloth in the piece; and Idisclaim all that is shown in these patents. I also disclaimimprovements in bleaching, dyeing, printing,

and sizing cotton and other yarns or threads, because the bleaching anddyeing of yarns or threads is a totally different art from that ofbleaching and dyeing loose cotton fiber.

What I claim as my invention is- 1. The process of treating cotton orother like fiber by first forming it into a long narrow lap or bat, andthen conducting such lap or jbat through a series of pairs of squeezingand feeding rollers and saturating it between these pairs of rollerswith a suitable fluid, so that the lap is alternately saturated andsqueezed several times in succession as it is fed along by thesqueezing-rollers, substantially as and for the purpose specified.

2. The process of bleaching and washing cotthese pairs of rollers withthe bleachin g-liqnor,

and then conducting the same lap or bat befeeding rollers and saturatingit with water between the pairs of this second series of pairs ofrollers, substantially as and for the purpose specified.

3. The process of bleaching, washing, and dyeing cotton or like fiber byfirst forming it into a long narrow lap or bat, then conducting such lapor bat through a series of pairs of squeezing and feeding rollers andsaturating it between these pairs of rollers with the bleaching-liquor,then conducting the same lap or bat between a second series of pairs ofsqueezing and feedin grollers and saturating it with water between thepairs of this second series of pairs of rollers, and then conducting thesame lap or bat between a third series of pairs of squeezing and feedingrollers and saturating it with the dyeing-liquor between the pairs ofthis third series of pairs of rollers, substantially as and for thepurpose specified.

4. The process of dyeing cotton or like fiber consisting in formingit'into a long narrow lap or bat, and then conducting such lap or batbetween a pair of squeezing or feeding rollers, then saturating it withthe dye-liquor, and con ducting it through a second pair of squeezingtonor like fiber by first forming it into a long 1 tween a second series ofpairs of squeezing and rollers, then conducting it off to a distance inorder to give aproper exposure to the air, and afterward repeating thisoperation as the lap or bat is fed along by the series of squeezing andfeeding rollers, substantially as described. 5. In combination, trougha, its rollers 11 0, creeper d, rollers e, water-supply tank 9, andreceiving-tank g, substantially as described.

. FREDK. WILKINSON.

Witnesses:

MARCUS S. HOPKINS, CHAS. E. UPPERMAN.

